The food thread

[TerryO]

Originally Posted by SY

3/14. Pi Day.

My wife's contribution: Ready for (Cherry) Pi Day

Sy,

That's great!

3/14, Pi Day

[jackinnj]

Let me tell you who wears the apron in this house, and it's not the molecular biologist XYL with all her peer review, referreed articles -- I had my nieces over from Cali and Eire and made an apple pie last week -- used Upstate NY Apples -- combo of brown and white sugar, mace (the very fragrant part of the nutmeg), cinnamon and a splash of vanilla extract. Crisco crust!!!!! C'est magnifique.

[jackinnj]

Jacques Pepin is making "quenelle" -- used to be Pike -- but he's using cod, etc. I have now learned that 2 tbsp in French = 1 cup of white wine.

[firechief]

toast-- ummmmm

[jacco vermeulen]

Humm---broccoli tempura.
For lunch with raw fishy & Nippon juice.

[Cal Weldon]

Mmmm...tempura and raw fish, yum.

What fish you usin' and WTF is Nippon juice?

[jacco vermeulen]

Halibut, after a couple of hours sucking between kelp sheets, hirame kobujime.
(didn't eat the kelp, tossing it in the soup tomorrow)

Halibut doesn't ring my bell when it's fried/grilled or whatever, but raw and/or marinated it's almost addictive.

Nippon juice as in soy sauce, wasabi, Japanese ginger and vinegar, hadn't made my mind up when i posted the pic.
Crawling under the car in the garage after lunch was murder, busy wrenching this weekend.

[Cal Weldon]

Quick question, how much more do you spend to get real wasabi vs. the green radish they pass off for it?

[jacco vermeulen]

About $75 the pound overhere. Amusing bit, afaig, the wasabi roots sold here are cultivated in Canada.

The stores i frequent that have fresh wasabi are not around the corner, i visit them every couple of months (good rice e.g. i get in 110lb bags).
What i do is freeze the stuff in ice cube trays, then vacuum the cubes separately in a plastic bag, works great.
I do the ice cube thing with a number of stuff btw, e.g. fond that i make myself a couple of times a year.

There's also a pre-made frozen variety, forgot the name, made in Kiwiland.

[nezbleu]

I have no photos for this, but promise to make it again and document it next time.

I love limes -- probably something to do with spending a lot of time in Montserrat BWI when I was young. But I don't eat/drink them very often, although I think I do. So whenever I'm in the shop and see a decent price on decent limes I buy some. Or if my wife makes her grilled chicken recipe that uses 1/2 of one lime, the next time I'm in the grocery store I think "Oh, we need more limes" and buy a few. So recently I looked in the fruit drawer of our refrigerator and realized we had 3 rotting limes and about eight good ones.

So I needed to use them for something. I decided I wanted to bake a lime pie, but not a key lime pie: I didn't have key limes, and I don't like condensed milk. It seemed like every lime pie recipe I could find was for key lime pie. So I thought "OK, I like lemon meringue pie, I'll make that but with limes". So I juiced and grated the zest from about 8 limes, which yielded a little over one cup (250ml) of juice and a large handful of grated lime zest.

So I started cooking the corn-starch-thickened custard for a lemon pie recipe but with lime, but the recipe called for the juice of one lemon and a tablespoon of zest, and some water. Hmm... that won't do, I want to taste the limes! A couple of days before I had made some coconut milk for a curry, and some of it was still in the fridge (not the curry, the coconut milk), so I used that instead of water (and reduced the butter since the coconut milk has a lot of fat), and used all my lime juice and zest. So, as I recall, about a cup of coconut milk and a cup of sugar and about 1/3 cup corn starch dissolved over medium heat, added >1c lime juice and a large handful of zest, simmered for a while, beat 3 egg yolks, tempered in the custard then added to the pot, brought to a simmer and let it thicken.

Meanwhile, rolled out and baked a pie crust. Sprinkled it with unsweetened grated coconut, poured in the (very limey, very tart) custard, beat 3 egg whites and beat in some sugar, spread the meringue on the pie, sprinkled with unsweetened grated coconut, baked.

It was the absolute best lime pie I have ever eaten. My daughter, my wife, and my mother all agree (and my mother used to live in the West Indies, so knows a thing or two about limes). Like I said, I will take photos of the next one!